Straussian Rhapsody - Calling for Disclosure with Science Fiction?
And can popular science fiction serve as a vehicle for covert disclosure?
[This article is free of any AI content]
A 65%.| 52% assertion
Who am I? (And why it matters to understanding this article)
Pt. 1 - Background
My case for why Subspace Rhapsody was a call-to-action for disclosure
Production-level & meta-level considerations
Re-interpreting remaining songs
My case *against* why Subspace Rhapsody could be related to Disclosure
Pt. 2 - The wider call-to-action
Pt. 3 - Decoding the crawl
Pattern
Concluding Remarks
Update Sep-2024 - Akiva Goldsman
A 65% | 52% assertion
I’ve been sitting on this assertion for several months as I keep sanity checking the underpinnings behind it. I needed to introduce the probability framework in advance or I don’t think I would have floated this at all.
I believe that, with 65%|52% probability (in the A|B probability format I introduced earlier),
“the recent penultimate Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode “Subspace Rhapsody” was a covert, call-to-action for whistleblower leaks from people who work in these black SAP programs (and anyone else who would be “in the know”) relating to UAP crash retrievals & reverse-engineering” 65%|52%
I’ve also thought about, on the marginal probability that this assertion is in fact true (just 2% beyond a 50/50 baseline of what I think the appropriate public belief level should be based on the evidence ) whether writing this article is even responsible. I believe it is responsible for several reasons:
Several months have passed since the episode aired.
The messaging is subtle, and could be lost on many of its intended recipients.
The Grusch revelations took place between the episode’s filming and its release, rendering the purported call-to-action at least somewhat redundant.
I feel there may also be a call-to-action for the wider world at large that people should at least be aware of the possibility.
In this article’s Pt. 3 I’m withholding some interpretation that I think would be less responsible to share presently.
With that, now I make my case.
Who am I? (And why it matters to understanding this article)
Since childhood I am a longtime fan of the Star Trek television franchise. Of the most of 1,000 unique episodes of Star Trek produced to date (80-90% of which I’ve watched), none have left me with the impression that they had anything seriously to do with Disclosure (and that’s including DS9’s “Little Green Men” which is saying a lot..! Although in retrospect that episode was probably an artistic response to the Air Force’s 1994 Roswell Report).
I am also a theater geek for just as long, so I naturally felt very “spoken to” by this first musical ST episode ever.
Also, the Grusch revelations from less than a month prior left me feeling very impacted (as this blog will demonstrate), so I was certainly in a very primed state of mind while viewing this episode. The revelation of black SAP programs doing un-American things to protect the secret left me feeling anger.
I used to work in aerospace-defense (basically, in the middle of the MIC) and left in large part because of the tendency toward spooky compartmentalization - that the right hand & the left hand could be made to do things in concert without either knowing why. This relinquishing of any agency made me feel very uneasy and demotivated. In retrospect, not being made aware of this nature of the work in advance leaves me feeling angry - I probably would have decided to begin on a different career pathway had it been clear to me beforehand.
Lastly, (but probably most saliently for many) I was coming off an edibles high when I watched it the first time, no doubt affecting my reaction. (One of only two times in my life I have ever done edibles). I have since watched the episode several times while perfectly sober.
All of these facts are salient to critiquing my comprehension of this episode. Interpret from them what you will.
Pt. 1 - Background
My case for why Subspace Rhapsody was a call-to-action for disclosure
Besides watching the episode itself (which I feel is necessary to follow this post), you might want to reference against the episode summary at Memory Alpha. Also, going forward I’ll use these acronyms: ST (Star Trek), SNW (Strange New Worlds), and SR (Subspace Rap)
The song that unlocked the deeper meaning of the entire episode for me was ”Keeping Secrets”, sung by the characters Una Chin-Riley & La’an Noonien-Singh. The audio version on streaming services is expanded from the video streaming version. I link here the audio streaming version’s lyrics and audio but to see the same things I did, you really need to watch the video itself, which I think will only come from watching on the Paramount+ streaming service. (I guarantee I get no kickbacks or affiliate fees for subscriptions - if only…). This is because there are key video clips overlayed over relevant lyrics.
In-universe: La’an has feelings for Kirk from a timeline in which he dies. Temporal prime directive applies for her not to say anything about what happened. She is wondering whether/how she should tell him about those feelings as well as what happened. Una provides advice as the voice of experience - not just as her senior officer, but because, in-universe, she had been hiding her genetically modified heritage as a member of the Illyrian alien race.
In the disclosure frame, in my mind’s eye, I envision this song being sung from the perspective of an experienced person in The [crash recovery & reverse-engineering] Program, instructing another in The Program who is less experienced, has information they think the global population should know about, but doesn’t know whether/how they should disseminate that information:
And the lyrics begin:
You've got lots of thoughts to wade through
Tangled webs of people who will
Complicate your life and thwart you
These are facts that I relate toThe would-be whistleblower is conflicted, and fearful. There are layers and layers of IC security apparatus designed to keep them from divulging information they know about The Program.
Pick and choose the truth that you want to tell
If you're bein' smart
No broken trust, no drama you just keep to yourself
Be your own best friend and confidant
'cause no one will protect you when things wrong“No broken trust, no drama” strikes me as an admonition to stick to the facts of the phenomenon at hand as the would-be whistleblower understands them. Not to out their boss(es), coworkers, not to dig up skeletons out of the closet of all the skulduggery needed to keep secrets safe. (I’m not saying I agree with this posture).
This excerpt stands out to me in light of how David Grusch actually went about is whistleblowing. He went to an experienced lawyer, and they filed a whistleblower complaint with the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG). He then went public on TheDebrief and NewsNation., being very, very careful to avoid disclosing things that he wasn’t specifically cleared by the DOPSR process to disclose. He didn’t break trust with his defense department commitments. I don’t doubt that Grusch has had to be his own best friend and confidant throughout. Would-be whistleblowers should expect to have to comport similarly.
The secrets you keep safe inside
Might keep you awake
And cut like a knifeThis phrase & accompanying visuals was probably the most haunting of the entire song. In the show, the “secrets you keep safe…cut like a knife” excerpt takes place as M’benga & Chapel stand alongside a sickbay med bed with a patient lying down on it. With the video & audio together, it evokes to me an alien autopsy on an operating table, and the shared recognition & realization that the subject can not possibly be human, with all the implications about humanity’s place in the universe that entails.
'cause the road to ruin is paved by intentions of fools
Nice people who
Couldn't keep a secretA rather sobering, almost threatening-sounding line. Many have tried to ‘go public’ with Disclosure when they shouldn’t have (in the singer’s eyes). Maybe they tried to disclosure too soon, or give away too much information. And that disclosure leads to their ruin, either figuratively or unfortunately literally, likely at the hands of The Program itself. Examples: Bob Lazar, Paul Bennewitz, and more chronicled in ufology.
”Couldn’t keep a secret” poignantly kicks off the 2nd visual of relevance in the disclosure framing. This except is accompanied by the 2nd visual that triggered the disclosure framing for me. Una takes a PADD, hits a button, turning off gravity. She and La’an hold each other and float in a circle around each other. In-frame, this to me represents anti-gravity technology (or ‘propellantless-propulsion’ in more polite circles).
No one can keep you small
be bulletproof and ten feet tall
an island - population: one“island - population”, “ten feet tall”. This gets deeper into ufology (especially its ‘gaia’ constituency) than I prefer to tread with this post for focus & brevity. Suffice to say, lost/obscured continents with interesting inhabitants.
Secrets I keep safe inside
A skill I perfected so I could survive
It worked before
It doesn't serve me anymore
I wish I never learned how to be
So good at keeping secretsThe last verse makes me feel that the singer is The Program itself personified. All the compartmentalization, all the need-to-know, they byzantine layers of classification and non-classification in favor of obfuscation - keeping the secrets of the phenomenon “safe inside” was the ‘perfected skill’. Keeping the secret of ET was necessary during an earlier time, mid-20th century, when a more religious nation’s social psychology perhaps couldn’t handle the existence of ETs. As Grusch noted, that‘s changed, the US is more secular now, along with a similarly increasing proportion of the population of countries around the world. Keeping the secret no longer serves The Program, but the classification, compartmentalization, & enforcement are all “baked-in” already. The Program wishes it hadn’t learned how to become so good at keeping the secrets it no longer wants to keep.
The audio streaming version of these lyrics has additional excerpts of relevance:
[Audio version only]
It can be good to keep a secretThere are probably some aspects to The Phenomenon, The Program, or the government’s covering-up of it that the singer thinks should remain secret.
[Audio version only]
You don't owe the world a thing
In what you revealA would-be whistleblower probably has many pieces of secret information at hand. They don’t owe the world disclosure of all or even any of it.
The rest of this episode’s analysis below follows from my re-framing following the Keeping Secrets song.
Update 9-Nov-23
In replying to a reddit comment I recognized that this article makes the case for SR being a call to disclosure/whistleblowing, rather than a disclosure itself (whether sanctioned or unsanctioned). In fact, the primary driver of my reasoning on that is my - possibly flawed - interpretation of the ep’s code crawl described Pt 3. below. While my interpretation of half of it as a book cipher seems like it may contains disclosure-related elements, my interpretation of the rest was that it was an incomplete disclosure, more of a shibboleth to an intended niche audience (of which I am not a a member). I could be wrong, and if sleuths are able to interpret the code better than I can (assuming it’s not just filler altogether..!) they may conclude that the content is in fact a more direct disclosure itself.
Production-level & meta-level considerations
With Keeping Secrets as a starting point, and benefiting from a timely tweet of Eric Weinstein’s, I went on to learn about Straussian communication. This is where a 2nd meaning is layered into the primary meaning of an artist’s creative work. I found it instructive to look for sources of Straussian messaging in the make-up of the episode’s production.
The Elephant in the Room: This episode (and the prior animation-crossover one) were the first across the Star Trek franchise when the writers ever emphatically “broke down the fourth wall”. This is the hypothetical wall that separates the fictitious depicted universe from the audience’s reality. If ever the writers wanted to message directly to the fanbase, breaking down this wall is an important way to signal them to pay atteention.
Rod Roddenberry / Jeremy Corbell: One of Strange New Worlds’ producers, Rod Roddenberry (son of the famous Gene Roddenberry) is not only friends with outspoken ufology producer Jeremy Corbell, but also invited Corbell to speak at a 2022 Las Vegas Star Trek convention to talk about UFOs. According to Corbell, he was to have a followup meeting with Grusch at the ST convention although that meeting got cancelled due to administrative backlash from the IC. If there’s one common human element between the SR episode and UFO/UAP work, it’s Rod Roddenberry. (Obviously, if there was a disclosure element to this episode’s composition, I would not expect him to cop to this framing as that could expose sources). Of course, for those that believe in a subconscious connection to ETs (including any ability for them to instill creativiy) then no HUMINT activity need be invoked..🙂)
Akiva Goldsman: One of SNW’s top executive producers (among the large filmography under his belt) has exec-produced a UFO-focused adaptation.
Korby / Corbell: The episode makes repeated reference to the fact that the character Christine Chapel has finally been accepted to study with a Dr. Korby, a character introduced in The Original Series episode, “What are Little Girls Made Of?”. While there’s no doubt that SNW strives to show continuity to The Original Series, the pointed reference to this very obscure character and his name’s similarity to Corbell’s does make me pause.
“Nimerfro”: At the end of the episode, Uhura acknowledges a message from the starship Nimerfro. The name has no precedent in in-universe Star Trek canon, so it struck me as some kind of Easter Egg. Indeed. Scott Nimerfro was a writer who was a friend of SR episode writer Bill Wolkoff - they had collaborated on the Tron franchise. It turns out Nimerfro had two key connections to the ST franchise. First, he wrote an episode of Voyager that was an allegory for the Oppenheimer narrative. This was an obscure & not particularly memorable episode. Second and more importantly, he produced the movie about Trek fans called “Trekkies”. This is a much stronger, if oblique, tie-in to the Star Trek franchise. Star Trek fans themselves are being referenced, and I have to consider whether it is a more overt call to action in appealing to members of the Star Trek fanbase directly.
Fanbase appeal vis-a-vis black SAP programs: If the fanbase is being directly referened, one should consider that a significant number of revese-engineering program participants will be familiar with the Star Trek franchise and may be fans themselves based on their professional interests. Getting. a broadcast Straussian message through to participants in such highly compartmentalized STEM-heavy programs may be the most efficient way to appeal to this very niche part of the franchise’s audience.
Celia Rose Gooding’s use of Grey 👽 emoji: The Uhura actress references the Grey emoji (albeit generally pertaining to a personal orientation ) frequently in her tweets, including the day after the Grusch revelations.
Wolkoff’s UFO interest: The episode’s main writer, Bill Wolkoff is interested in UFOs
Chronology: Filming the 2nd season of Strange New Worlds wrapped up by July 2022. This was before Grusch started making his reachouts to Corbell & George Knapp. Although I find it unlikely that any movement behind messaging in Subspace Rhapsody was directly coordinated with Grusch’s whistleblowing, I feel the timing is a salient fact to be considered.
The SoCal aerospace community & Hollywood: It’s worth remembering that Southern California is known for two industries over the past century: 1) Hollywood, and 2) Aerospace. (Clinton’s 1990’s-era defense cuts were famously depressive to the Southern California economy). So not only could stories make their way “through the grapevine” from defense aerospace industry workers - including black project participants, to Hollywood writers, but over such a long timespan there is actually scope for generational knowledge transfer from former black project workers to their offspring, who likely as not rub shoulders with the Hollywood set.
Science advisory The show’s (outstanding, IMO) science advisor worked in the aerospace industry consulting for the Air Force and SAIC, and found The X Files her favorite show growing up.
NMFilm: The end-credits of each episode demonstrate that SNW partners with NMFilm, likely for tax credits and some exotic-looking film shooting locations. Te state of New Mexico is unambiguously referenced towards the end of this episode in the form of the famous Shiprock formation (below) seen as backdrop decoration of the bar. In Ufology & UFO lore, of course, New Mexico is second to none with respect to UFO history. During the June 26th whistleblower hearings in the House, it was voiced that The Department of Energy (known in NM for Los Alamos National Laboratory and Sandia National Labs) was anticipated to have activities associated with The Program.
Sunrise at Shiprock, New Mexico. Photo by Jimmy Conover on Unsplash
Re-interpreting remaining songs
Once keyed into this disclosure frame (‘in-frame’ below), most of the rest of the songs carry additional meaning. Prefacing that Uhura describes “the rules of musical theater” as songs are when the characters express how they truly feel.
Main Title (a cappella style)
No lyrics to read into here, this was just a cute way of re-doing the main titleStatus Report - Characters: Full Ensemble Cast
Again nothing to read into here, this song is just introducing the concept that this will be a musical episode, which itself comes as a surprise to many longtime viewers of the franchise.Connect to your Truth - Characters: Cmdr. Una Chin-Riley, Capt. James T Kirk
Una is encouraging Kirk to be open with his crew. In-frame, this strikes me as general encouragement for message recipients (would-be whistleblowers) to be more open with the people close to them about what they are working on.How Would That Feel - Characters: Chief of Security Lt. La’an Noonien Singh
La’an represents the Enterprise’s security.
In-frame, La’an as Chief of Security represents the framework of intelligence classification & its minders. She is struggling to believe she has seen advice from a higher authority figure (Una) to start Disclosing.Private Conversation - Characters: Capt. Christopher Pike, Capt. Batel
In my reading, his song introduces that the writers/producers of the show would like to insert some messaging into this episode that simply isn’t meant for the comprehension of all and sundry. [I did wonder if that should mean that an article like this should not be written, but I got over that concern as described earlier regarding responsibility]Keeping Secrets - Characters: Cmdr. Una Chin-Riley, Lt. La’an Noonien Singh
Described above.I’m Ready - Characters: Nurse Christine Chapel,
Truly a special song once viewed in context. Nurse Chapel represents humanity. She’s being accepted into a fellowship in the Vulcan Science Academy under Dr. Korby’s guidance. The line, “…so now the fellowship sees me as one of their own” sounds more like entry into some kind of member organization rather than a typical training, study, or scholarly fellowship.I’m the X - Characters: Science Officer Spock
Ever since the beginning of the franchise, Spock has been an unwavering, stoic personification of logic & science. In our efforts to understand the technologies behind the phenomena, the practice of science in its current form fails us because any of:the phenomena may involve metaphysical concepts that science struggles empirically verify, such as consciousness
Any research related to UAP propulsion (antigravity, bending spacetime, negating mass) falls immediately under a black-project classification treatment, defying scientific investigation
Keep Us Connected - Characters: Communications Officer Uhura
An amazing solo by the musical theater professional Celia Rose Gooding. This song introduces that there is a repeating pattern that needs to deciphered. The song indeed includes shots of a repeating pattern. I transcribe and introduce interpreting this pattern in Pt 3. below. Celia Rose Gooding / Uhura both seem to have a unique focus of this episode. Uhura, the communicator, has to bring the 200-person crew - the countries of Earth - together. And as mentioned earlier, Celia Rose Gooding, tweeted a grey alien emoji the day after the Grusch revelations.We Are One - Characters: Full ensemble cast and Enterprise crew
Taken in-frame, this song really feels momentous to watch. The ~200 countries of Earth are uniting to say they are ready, are prepared for contact and all that comes with it good & bad, and want to engage with whatever community of extraterrestrials / NHI exist around us. The theme that comes strongly through is that everyone is hitherto *too busy* to think about NHI & the phenomenon, the need to face it fully & popularly informed - and humanity’s wider place in the world. This song represents humanity’s uniting in changing its outlook.
My steelman case *against* why Subspace Rhapsody could be related to Disclosure
I’ve been of two minds about where I stand about writing this post since the episode it covers came out. This wikipedia article about the psychology of reading too much into things, Subjective validation , weighs most heavily on my mind. The fact that the musical element of the episode truly makes me happy independent of any messaging, as well as the general upbeat tone of it, renders me more likely to accept any perceived underlying messaging as real.
There are really two competing pre-existing conceptual frameworks at hand here. The first is the long-identified tendency for people to, simply put, “read too much into things.”. This goes by such terms as
The 2nd is the similarly long-applied practice of authors cryptographically transmitting information. Keywords associated with this are:
Which side of this coin one falls on in any given situation of reading *potentially* encoded content is…subjective. *Any* piece of creative output might in fact be falling into one or neither of these two camps. Some great artistic commentaries can be seen to be a covert critique of something powerful, like government or society, contemporary to the time and place in which the work was created. Since precedent for both exists, the only way to get a handle on it is to get more pairs of eyes looking at it. Hence this article, and, well, your eyes 🙂.
Specifics
Back to the “Keeping Secrets” song. Let’s try to debunk what brought me into the disclosure frame in the first place as, without that, a lot of the weight of the rest of this analysis falls apart. I referred to two shots that particularly stuck out at me. The “shutting gravity off” shot is the first one. The producers were very much aware of the musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a template, and SR’s writers unambiguously referenced that Buffy episode. This Buffy episode also depicts a duet between female characters in which one is made to levitate. So the shot in question *could* be another homage to this episode.
The 2nd shot, of Christine Chapel and Dr M’benga sharing a poignant look at each other over a patient on the medical bed, in-universe is probably *supposed* to represent the dark challenges the two have gone through together (specifically, augmenting themselves pharmaceutically to fight in a war context)
There are also 2 more shots in this same interlude that don’t carry any overt disclosure framing to me: that of Uhura looking at Spock during their collaboration, and Capt. Pike swiping through candidate vacation destinations.
Pt. 2 - The wider call-to-action
In the final number - “all 200 crewmen” needing to sing in unison was invoked by Spock. Since Star Trek lore, backed up by quotes from episodes of The Original Series, held that the USS Enterprise crew was about 430 individuals, this 200 value stuck out at me. The only relevance the number 200 had to me was the approximate number of countries in the world (depending on how one defines country, & some specific regional politics). So in the context of speaking in one unified voice, ‘200’ struck me more as the number of countries on the Earth advocating through a collectivizing forum such as the UN. I interpreted that, in the roman-a-clef / coded-message context, they were calling on the countries of the world for a vote to demonstrate humanity’s collective intention that we were ready for disclosure/confirmation.
While I still think this is a possibility, this belief has been mitigated by my learning recently that “The Cage” establishes a crew complement of 203.
Pike: “I'm tired of being responsible for two hundred and three lives.”
Still, even outside any disclosure-related framing, the writers could have emphasized the 200 person crew (instead of just saying something general like, “the entire crew” in order to cross-signify in a more general sense about bringing together that same number of nations of Earth.
Update 26-Nov:
For some reason I seem to have left out one possibly very important aspect to the call-to-action: It’s not related to supporting evidence, but rather about what should be done at a technical level if humanity decides collectively that it wants confirmation and engagement with The Phenomenon. In building to episode’s climax, Spock mentions that the crew needs to sing in unison sufficiently in order to (insert standard ST technobabble here) reach a threshold of 344 giga-electron volts (GeV). A very specific value, and eminently searchable for salience to modern-day physics. We aren’t disappointed, as apparently 344 GeV is the mass of the top quark-antiquark pair. Could it be that there is some way of transmitting a signal that is reliant on the mass of the top quark? Does doing so signify advancing past a key technological barrier that is relevant to NHI?This is a question that only particle physicists can answer.
Pt. 3 - Decoding the crawl
A would-be whistleblower wants to know that they won’t be alone in their effort i.e. that they’re hearing this call for disclosure not just from creative people in Hollywood, but from others in The Program in touch with & communicating through the screenwriters & showrunners, and songwriters. I suspect the scrolling text crawl that repeats during Uhura’s song “Keep Us Connected”, like a shibboleth, serves that purpose.. I reproduce it (after much painstaking transcription & error-checking) below:
Text crawl from Keep Us Connected”
32 603.403 RP 11?91
38 808.212 R6 17?62
24 702.018 PU 14?27
88 882.826 65 11?94
43 813.197 US 12?81
88 341.027 57 10?47
38 125.845 S6 13?28
8B 223.633 7E 14?42
8A 409.862 6C 10?42
B6 809.323 E0 17?16
A1 998.384 CL 10?91
6A 966.185 0C 15?39
11 264.676 LM 13?17
A2 821.128 CQ 16?35
10 637.168 MK 16?53
26 235.061 QZ 18?87
05 451.117 KX 19?94
6B 870.046 ZF 15?48
58 392.482 X5 14?04
B5 658.270 FW 10?69
[Reproduced here under fair-use as this content is the subject of critical analysis of the present post]
Transcription notes:
I intend no additional meaning with the size of whitespaces or excess indentation, using an arbitrary 2 spaces between text fragments for ease of readability. Substack’s formatting doesn’t seem to reliably allow for fixed-width fonts.
As presented, the order represents the ‘start-end’ given by the interleaving nature of the pattern - RP-PU-US-S6- etc. even as it remains unclear which direction (upwards or downwards) is considered start vs. end.
The column order is given by the varying rates by which adjacent instances of the repeating pattern are depicted as scrolling past each other.
Font ambiguities with the characters 8 vs. B and 0 vs. O vs. D turned about to be correctable by corresponding characters in column-1 and column-3, placing in alphanumeric order.
Pattern
Associating matching characters together in both col-1 and col-3, the code follows a double-helix pattern - one row leads the row 2 below it, sort of like two intertwined helices. I don’t want to prime thinking too strongly here by alluding to DNA, so here is an alternative illustrative image:
Interpretation
Having gone down several rabbit-holes on what the code could represent, I’m currently of the mind - but by no means *entirely* convinced - that column-1 and column-4 form a pair. I believe that the col-1 & col-4 pair signify a book-cipher that is referenced to the 19 episodes of SNW that had been released up through this episode’s airing. In my read, the Cols 1,4 pair provide narratives related to black SAP program work vis-a-vis the phenomenon. (I’ve gone through this exercise, and it’s intriguing even if inconclusive - i.e. certainly the subject of a future article).
Remaining columns: And after going a lot of rabbit holes, I have my beliefs about what columns 2 & 3 represent as well. Suffice to say, I don’t believe they are a covert disclosure to sleuths, but rather serve as a shibboleth to would-be whistleblowers that the messaging of the episode does indeed originate from their own (and not simply appeals from ufologists, no matter how well-studied they are). If I’m correct, a would-be whistleblower (but also their minders..) will recognize they are being referenced with one-in-a-million chance of being due to total randomness. And with the same data, for every piece of information carried among these columns, sleuths would need extensive resources following up a thousand leads. Therefore currently I’m not inclined to describe more about what I think of columns 2 & 3 as I think doing so could only induce crackdown activity near-term.
Concluding Remarks
As my probability values in the introduction indicate (which remember are against a 50/50 zero-rated baseline), I don’t know with any certainty whether underlying meaning was intended to be communicated through the SR episode, the Strange New Worlds seasons, or the Star Trek franchise in general.
Let’s return to the Subject Validation framing. Librettists/lyricists are intrinsically motivated to write language that speaks widely to their audience while enabling each audience member to find unique meaning pertaining to themselves (I don’t want to compare their profession to horoscope writing, but the same modus operandi applies). If that’s what’s operative here, then I can only hope that would-be whistleblowers identify as inadvertently as I did with SR’s cleverly-crafted general lyrics (and hope that this article helped them feel that way).
Certainly at a more abstract artistic level, I don’t think it’s reading too much in to simply say that the SR producers/writers/librettists do intend themes of openness & togetherness in creating this episode (indeed, writing “Keep Us Connected” moved its own writer to tears). Doing so would simply be dovetailing with long-held ST traditions. In that light, I hope would-be whistleblowers will find reason to take some heart.
Update Sep-2024: Akiva Goldsman
In a library recently, I happened across a dusty copy of one of Dan Brown’s novels in his popular Robert Langdon fiction series. Having (since this article) become a fan of things Straussian, I was especially primed to give it a read. When I later did some background research about the film adaptations, imagine my surprise to find that Akiva Goldsman, the above-referenced exec producer of SNW, was the writer for The Da Vinci Code’s screenplay. And he co-wrote the film sequel Angels & Demons.
It should need no reminding to pop culture fans that, like the theme of the article you are reading, the Robert Langdon / Da Vinci Code book & film series is about symbols surreptitiously placed in seemingly prosaic circumstances in order to provide additional meaning (which serve to help the protagonist save the day). Goldsman’s role in screenwriting these films means he is uniquely primed about Straussian communication, whether or not he would use that term. Interleaving an episode with clues alluding to messaging he would like to transmit is entirely in keeping with this unique experience of his in the history of writing for the entertainment industry.
Why the focus on Goldsman as opposed to another executive producer? Per Wikipedia, the series’ other executive producers are Alex Kurtzman and Jenny Lumen. I generally look at the credits of the episodes themselves, which most frequently cite Kurtzman, Goldsman, Henry Alonso Myers, and Rod Roddenberry, especially for SR (despite SR’s long list of producers on IMDB). My understanding is that Kurtzman helped start the SNW series, but his day-to-day role as regards showrunning is otherwise absentee. I haven’t studied Myers much. Rod Roddenberry I wrote about above. We could also be discussing the episode’s & songs’ writers & director in more depth. But Goldsman long stood out to me (alongside Henry Alonso Myers) as the executive producer with the most engagement in the individual episodes.
It’s notable that I wasn’t expressly researching Akiva Goldsman when I chanced upon his creative role in these film titles. In keeping with Bayesian updating, this all deserves a priors-update.
My earlier probability assertion that there was a UAP-related interpretation interwoven throughout the episode 65% | 52%. In light of the new Akiva Goldsman / Da Vinci Code find, I’m upgrading that to 72% | 55%.
PS. Regarding the interpretation of the code crawl, I know I’ve been coy about my own interpretation, and I remain coy today. This is in part to protect those for whom an accurate interpretation of the crawl would render more vulnerable to retaliation (if there is indeed content encoded in it). But also I’m interested in eliciting others’ interpretations before I bias folks with my own … someday.
What do you make of the code, if anything? Especially if you feel it wouldn’t compromise anyone to, then welcome to put into the comments.